man found that he was caught and convicted, — for every thing had been revealed to the queen by one of the confederates, — he could only, with clasped hands, implore the prince’s pardon and mercy, at whose feet he would have thrown himself; but he prevented him from so doing, and went on to say: “Look you — have I ever offended you? have I injured any of your associates by private enmity? It is not three weeks since I first knew you: what motive can have impelled you to undertake my death?” To this the gentleman replied, in a trembling voice, that no private reasons had moved him, but the general interest of his party’s cause; and that certain persons had persuaded him that it would be a pious deed to make away with so powerful an enemy of their form of faith by any means whatsoever. “Now,” pursued the prince, “I propose to shew you how much milder is the form of faith which I follow than that which you profess. Yours induced you to kill me without hearing me, having received no injury at my hands; and mine commands me to forgive you, convicted as you are of having desired, without cause, to kill me. Now go, take yourself off, and let me never see you here again; and, if you are wise, henceforth in your undertakings take better men than those for your advisers.”
The Emperor Augustus, being in Gaul,[1] received reliable warning of a conspiracy that Lucius Cinna was brewing against him. He determined to be revenged, and to that end summoned a council of his friends for the next day. But the intervening night he passed in great disquiet, reflecting that he was about to put to death a young man of good family and a nephew of the great Pompey; and in his dejection conceived several contrary arguments. “How then!” he exclaimed; “shall it be said that I live on in fear and alarm, and that I let my murderer go his way unharmed? Shall he go free, having aimed at my life, which I have brought safely through so many civil wars, so many battles by sea and land, and after I have established universal peace throughout the world? Shall he be absolved, when he had plotted, not simply to murder me, but to sacrifice me?” For the intention was to kill him as he was offering some sacrifice.
- ↑ See Seneca, De Clementia, I, 9.
